Workshop on Yale’s Collection of East Asian Literary and Visual Materials “A Literary, Artistic Historian: Rai San’yō and the Modernization of Japan”

In 1827, Rai San’yō (1780–1832) presented a history of Japan written in literary Sinitic to Matsudaira Sadanobu, a major figure in the Tokugawa shogunate. Also in 1827, San’yō, his family, and their friends exchanged poems and paintings that appear in a set of albums entitled Jūjun kagetsu (A Hundred Days of Flowers and the Moon), a rare manuscript version of which is now in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

How did San’yō’s history-writing intersect with his literary and artistic pursuits? A key to this question lies in the literati ideals of the East Asian intellectual, shared across present-day China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

This hands-on workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to engage with a selection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literary and visual materials in Yale’s collection to trace and consider the ways in which Sinographic academic and artistic practices—and not just Euro-American influences—propelled the complex political and cultural processes through which East Asian societies transformed into modern nation-states.